Are we hyper violent as a species?

We have gory movies like Saw, gory games like Manhunt. Do we enjoy violence?

Is the fake depiction of violence a release for our primal instincts? Is that the only reason why there aren't a whole lot more of us committing heinous crimes?

Going to give my opinion, a shot in the dark and probably only part of the story:



Some are. Really hard to say 'how it is' from my limited view on what I see everyday. There'll always be violence I feel, just as there will always be it's opposite, not to mention all the variations lesser and/or moreso.

Is it satisfying something primal? I mean,, yeah we're amazingly articulate primates that dress decently, live in some form of housing, go to work, have friends, pontificators, though we are still afterall..primates. The apple doesn't fall far I think.. Not that this is some sort of an excuse, but it is who we are at one level - male dominance, killing others of the same species, hierarchical, and the whole social dynamic of most primates. I mean... I don't think you want me going into what primates can/will do to one another through agression.... it's not pretty.. I'll tell you that. There's many documentaries on the social dynamics and aggressive tendencies of some of our closest relatives [bonobos, chimpanzees].

Im not necessarily in agreement with these characteristics I listed, but I mean I just don't see these things getting swept under the rug or transmuted into some beautiful paradisiacal everyone-loves-one-another .. I just don't see it. I think there'll always be these not-so-nice aspects, and there will always be those working against these things for the betterment of themselves and one another - socially, emotionally, etc. A continual tug o' war.

Im not pessimistic, promise! I just don't like to look the other way on these things.

That aside, there ARE many beautiful things to be said for human beings. I really do believe in it comes down to what you're aiming to focus on in your life in terms of how you look out on and view the world. There's so ..so many variables.

I'm done rambling.

My opinion is that our society is de-sensitized to the point we need horror and violence in TV to get some rush. TV would be boring if the content would not be exxagerated.

I think it's the nature and nurture problem - unless bringing up examples, we need to separate what it truly natural to us and what is a result of conditioning, harsh or stressed life circumstances etc.

We are social species evolved to cooperate in small groups of 150 members or so. Unfortunately, large cities are still quite unnatural for our outdated "software". We still praise a "strong monkey" to be our leader, unfortunately, even if the person is ruthless, uncaring and simple-minded - if he's loud and confident enough, he'll make it.

Only small percentage is truly violent, maybe 0.5% or so?

There is also a small group of veterans and policemen somehow addicted to adrenaline rush - these people can get violent just to get their "hit", maybe even join lynch mob etc.

It is known lots of harm is done to the soldiers, they come back from conflicts with PTSD.

During WW II, Jews had to be marked as "non-humans" otherwise it would be too hard to abuse and kill them. People are just not wired to harm another fellow being.

About 1% are psychopaths and 4% or so are sociopaths. These people are not necessarily violent, like depicted in the movies. Some have happy families. They are rather emotion-less and some interested in gaining power (you can find many in politics, high positions in management etc ...)

I think statistics show that in most western countries, the amount of violent crimes is slowly decreasing, probably due to an aging population.

At the same time it does indeed look a bit like movies or TV-series that depict violence, have become more extreme. Compare the first bond movies to the latest ones, or the batman series with adam west, to nolans dark knight trilogy.

Maybe it's a reaction to the fact that because of social media, we simply get to witness more violence.

There may also be a commercial reason: violent material is the best clickbait there is, because it triggers our deepest fears (headlines like 'serial killer on the run', or 'massacre in Streets of X-city' do have a bit of an alarming effect, don't they?). In TV series, a brutal act of violence at the beginning, will keep you watching it because you want the bad guy to get cought and justice to be done, and you want to see it happening. retribution is the lure to get people hooked.

http://www.azlyrics.com/lyrics/tool/vicarious.html

Very relevant

@endlessness: Link doesn't work for me.

I don't know if this has any relation, but e.g. Mirra Alfassa once explained something like that:
That people build unconsciously emotional armors around them to shut off (negative) emotions.
If this armor gets thick, then they have the problem, that they need very very extreme emotions to be able to still feel something.
So to get the feeling of Ananda they have to trigger extreme emotions. This they do by either triggering extreme events for oneself or for others. (e.g. sadistic or masochistic tendencies)

It was the lyrics to Tool's Vicarious song (which isn't one of my favs from them but they always nail it with the lyrics )

op nailed it. yes. as a species.
for those who search (perhaps not available in english) there is a body of scientific research that is quite solid imho.

I think what with 1000's of years of war and general depravity our civilisation is used to violence. However I do believe as a species on the whole we are probably less violent than we have ever been.

From my observations and assumptions, people feel uncomfortable when violence is in their current locality. Sure there are some that may see local violence as an excuse to be violent back rather than try to diffuse a situation like most of us probably would, but they are probably harbouring some kind of insanity as a result of not being able to think of more constructive ways to channel their negative energy.

Bottom line is we are a species of tribes Within each tribe we a genetically programmed to look after one and other. A pack or team species. Many of the tribes have now integrated peacefully but there are some pockets of mainly government and various militia that haven't learned to play nice and they are still very much of an us and them mentality and are still a long way from the peace that I sincerely believe that many of us have already found internally. Generally the root violence can be found by an internal disturbance that causes addictions to dirty habits like getting more money and power than one needs. These people probably view themselves as above the majority of mankind and therefore will never truly be like one of us, whom to them are disposable.

Forunately for me, I am insulated from the majority of violence in the world. No domestic abuse, not in a war zone, don't engage in criminal activity, live in a fairly quiet city, etc etc etc. However, although I live below the poverty line, I am in the US and I will eat tonight and I live in relative luxury but that is unlike the vast majority of the world's population.

It is easy in our ivory towers to say that humans are not a violent species when in fact the history of humanity and a quick look at current geopolitical affairs quickly puts the lie to that. And by ivory towers I pretty much mean any of us here in this forum with the time to spend experimenting with what we do; we are the fortunate ones in this world. Look at a picture of Mosul from yesterday and ask if we are violent.

I smoked weed with a 23 year old combat vet yesterday, really nice kid. He told me some of the horrible things he saw in Afghanistan, clearing homes where ISIS had gone in and raped and killed entire families, enemy soldiers falling in his rifle scope. He told me he had some difficulty with the memories of dead children, but his regret was not knowing if he had killed anyone. He had entered the Army and gone to war because that is what he wanted. When he said this, he smiled. Again, really nice kid, and I mean it.

Are we violent? Why do people watch movies like "Saw"? I cannot answer that and I wish I could. I love horror movies, lurid monsters and skulls leered from movie posters all over my childhood room, to this day I love the cheesy violence of watching impossible scenarios play out in films. But when a girlfriend and I rented "The Hills Have Eyes" remake, I had to turn it off and was literally sick to my stomach at the horror it depicted with ultra-realism.

I do not understand the desensitization to the pain of other human beings that seems to be the norm for the culture I live in. It glorifies violence and holds greed up as a standard to admire. I don't understand a lot of things about it, and unfortunately, the wiser I get the less I do. But I don't think that puts me in the majority. I hear a lot about love and compassion, empathy and kindness being motivating factors in people's actions but I don't see a lot of it.

I guess in answer to the question, yes. But that does not mean that we have to be. It is possible to live with loving kindness, to give without expectation and to therefore affect the others around you to do the same. It takes action to be non-violent, just as it takes action to be violent. Going out in the street and yelling at pro-Trump supporters is not the type of action I mean, but rather volunteering at a homeless shelter, being a reading tutor to a cognitively-challenged adult, doing something for someone and your community that needs doing. You can't take a piece of dark and darken up a room, but you can light a little candle and the furthest corner of it will be illuminated.


Can you elaborate on the aging population bit, I don't follow. Also, what are you basing the comment on increasing violent crime rates? FWIU, in the US, violence has been declining now for decades, although the last few years may have seen an uptick.

I am not too lazy to perform a search and would like to see what you refer to, but I'm going to need a little better hint than that.

Violence, anger, aggression, brutality, hatred, sadism, masochism all part of the individual human experience.

There are healthy ways of expressing this part of ourselves. People unconsciously indulge through the horrors of daily news.

Other people do martial arts, which I think is a very healthy thing. Violence is fun. Its playful and enjoyable!

Hard to say. I think like mentioned above the primate wiring is in there but....

A few years ago I chomped a handful of mushrooms and 20mins later the Bing! of first effects noticed took place when I started listening to the advertisements on the radio. They sounded so alien and like "taunting" in a way. Like some sort of verbal brainwashing overload, and they were one after another after another... it was so, bad. But 20 minutes before it was so everyday common I didnt really perk up against it, it just flowed right into my ear like an everyday thing.

Thinking about that, look at cartoons and toys etc. geared towards kids. They can't even finish wiping the placenta off before they are bombarded by different versions of violence. Of course we dont trigger on it because it's a cartoon roadrunner and a wiley coyote and they're doing their violence in goofy ways but, the violence is there.

Imagine being a kid growing up in one of these ISIS type areas. What do you think those kids get "taught" from day one?

My point here, I wonder how a human baby would grow up if birthed in a completely different world. I wonder how much of what we do is "genetic" and how much of it is based upon the various avenues that we have learned overtime since we were a clean slate at birth.

Of course the eat, sleep, breed factor will always be there, since this flesh puppet is still stuck to us and needs to be maintained etc. But I've often wondered if you were to place that same human child, while still essentially a blank slate, into an alternate world that operated differently than the ONE pathway that seems "right" to humans and has been cultivated on this earth, how different that childs behavior could ultimatly end up being as opposed to how it will end up being birthed into what we have accepted as "what needed to be done".

@ null24: no i meant DEcreasing, not increasing.

The idea is that people become less violent once they reach a certain age (lower levels of testosteron, etc.). So because the percentage of older people in society increases, the amount of violent crimes in relation to the population as a whole (amount of people who become a victim of a violent crime per 100 or 1000 citizens) decreases.

So does the prevalence of violence in our media make us more prone to violence, or does it satisfy the primal urge?

I think the answer to both is yes and no. Honestly, I think the questions being asked here are wrong, but only in that they don't yield useful information.

The fact is that as humans, we are drawn to conflict and most media serve what is desired by the masses. Yes, as a whole we are effected by the media but it's a two way street. I think that the answers being sought here are highly complicated. One statistical fact to point out is that throughout modern history, as armed conflict takes place the frequency of horror films increases. I'm not sure, but suspect that the same holds true for written works.

I would also like to point out that as a species, we are not much more violent than many others with specific focus on mammals. There is one specific event in human history that precipitates a marked increase and substantial change in violence.
AGRICULTURE... and the ownership of land.
This is the point in history in which our violence far outpaces other species. This is the point where human violence becomes more than one on one or small group violence. This is where warfare is born.

The irony is that this is also where modern civilization and specialization of labor is born. It's not as if we can simply do away with it. 99% of human population would quickly die of starvation.

Terence McKenna talks of the human experiment, but I would argue that the real experiment is civilization. As humans, we are animals and that is not much of a departation from the norm. We have opposable thumbs and a large mass of grey matter which on it's own isn't differetially impressive. It's this civilization thing that we have built with them that is truly impressive. But 10,000 years after the birth of agriculture, we are still struggling to adapt to it. It's the same struggle, but it has been obstructed by the problems that have arisen from countless other developments in how we deal with the world both as humans and as a civilization.

As been said before, humans don't seem to be much more violent than most other homonoïds. Given the fact that, for a human, it takes at least 9 to 10 months to create new life while ending a life doesn't need to take more than a second, i think it's fair to say that if our violent tendencies would even come close to our more constructive tendencies, we, as a species wouldn't have lasted for over 5 million years.

The human being is a highly social species. That makes our relationship with violence a very complex one. Overall you can say that the vast majority of people have a very strong aversion against violence. But the point is: we do have an innate 'eye for an eye' mentality. This mentality is typical for social species.

There is this 'escallationmodel', wich is often used in diplomacy, as well as in warfare. It basically says that whatever one man does to another, he can Always expect his victim or victims family or friends, to come up with something worse.

Generally it helps to keep conflicts in check. The cold war is the best example of this. But there is a catch....when a conflict does escalate, it escalates realy quickly and realy bad.

All our violent tendencies have the evolutionary function of preventing violence. Our ability to be cruel keeps most wars cold. It reïnforces our aversion of violence. There's Always the posibility of revenge and Mutual destruction, wich is NOT a tempting perspective for most people.
But if the cold war would have escalated, it could have escalated into a very hot war, very quickly.
The 'if you kill one of ours, we'll kill ten of yours' model does help to prevent conflicts from escalating. But when it fails to do so, the model tends to do exactly what the warning labels on the package claim it does. Wich is exactly why it usually works.

Evolutionary logic is cold as ice. As long as the benefits of something outweigh the costs, as long as something works most of the time, it'll stay.

As i explained in my previous post, our violent tendencies are a bit like a dog chasing it's own tail. I think we generally realy do hate violence. But we hate it so bad that whenever we see someone comitting a violent crime, we want to see that person burn. We crave for revenge. So our lust for violence is fed by our very aversion of it.

In most TV-series or action movies, there is a bad guy, doing something terrible somewhere at the beginning. This at that point triggers a lust for revenge, wich then becomes the reason for us to keep watching. And if you want to get people realy hooked, the best way is to almost let the bad guy get away with the most terrible things. Especially when the bad guy kills an innocent child or something, we are likely to keep watching, no matter how lousy the script or actors. If somebody kills a child, that's something we cannot just allow to pass. So we have to stay tuned till that terrible monster of a guy get's what's coming for him.

So the media use our aversion of violence, to lure us. A headline like 'serial killer on the loose' will get most people's attention. Not because we generally sympathise with serial killers, but exactly because we don't like them and we don't want them around in our neighbourhoods.

The more gory type of movies (saw, etc.) are realy a different category, i think. They'll never become mainstream. Most people just don't want to watch that shit. Just a very small group of people who're probably sexually deprived in some kind of way because they had donald trump as a father or something.

Just remember that we are in the middle of an evolutionary process, so the things we are today doesn't necessary have to be the things we are tomorrow. Ok, most likely we will be that tomorrow also, but maybe not as much and maybe not at all in.. lets say 100 years.

And the human race is blessed with the opportunity to be able to choose how to live. We can live in symbiosis with the nature or as parasites. We can be violent or non-violent. Etc. etc. It all depends on what we choose and how we define ourself.

Sure, primal instincts are extremely strong and you will have to be very, very self aware to not fall into all the old patterns now and then. But I am convinced that it is possible to break free and live 100% freely without interference of the instincts that now have played out its role a long time ago.

Sorry if I went off topic, but I just felt I have to say that.

So back to the question. With violence I guess you mean violence as an act of aggression. Not for example, as for me when I'm training Muay thai. Because I feel no aggression at all but I'm violent as hell. So I enjoy violence in certain forms but I disgusts aggression in all forms and if I start to feel aggression during my sparring sessions, I stop the training and calm my self down.
Or maybe even a better example, a violent thunderstorm can be very fascinating to watch for me. To see and feel the enormous display of power brought forward by mother nature.

When it comes to gory movies and such, I think that it is, for many people, a sort of bizarre fascination or should I say perversion about the extreme that makes it interesting. Similar to thunderstorms and me.

And when it comes to aggression. Yes, I think we are very aggressive as a spices right now but I don't think there is a lot of people that enjoys it, just the feeling alone. But think a lot of people enjoy the effect of it very much. That is, the use of aggression to get power over others.

That's just my 2 cents

Edit:
I just realized that many people may enjoy other aspects of the aggression as well since the body will go into fight/flight mode and release shit loads of adrenaline, endorfins and all sorts of things that will give you a sort of natural high. In the same way as fear does for those who like extreme sports. And it might be other aspects as well. But yeah, I hope you get my point that I don't think the feeling alone without any consequences is enjoyable for the vast majority.

You need help dude! You are not healthy if you think that way.....

I think(or at least hope) what was meant is how we're able to safely express negative emotions in a positive, constructive manner rather than regressing to violence or other forms of destructive behaviors.



This doesn't seem appropriate, however.